


Take down at a rave

by KByrd



Series: Tourist in time [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 03:09:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1966746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KByrd/pseuds/KByrd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve goes on a mission with Clint and learns something new about his partner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take down at a rave

Steve doesn’t ask why they are tailing a twenty-something slip of a girl around town and Clint does not offer an explanation. The girl, who is slim and dark, looks vaguely middle eastern and favours long flowing dresses and colourful head scarves. She’s also followed everywhere by three armed body guards - two on either side and another ranging far ahead or behind.

They spend most of four days tracking her without seeing an opportunity to separate her from her minders.

Clint is used to working alone and he’s not the most chatty of partners, but Steve is learning that he’s fair and easy to work with.

On the fifth day, the girl (whose name Steve does not know), is driven very late at night into an industrial park. Clint and Steve park their banged up loaner car around the corner and follow on foot, carefully. The girl is let into a side door of a warehouse, followed by her body guards.

Steve is about to follow, but Clint shakes his head and points to another door around the corner where a mob of people are gathering. In the distance, Steve can hear rock music blaring.

“It’s a rave,” Clint says. “We’re not going in dressed like this."

“Huh?”

Steve follows Clint to the car where they both deposit their weapons in the trunk. Clint tosses in his jacket and motions for Steve to do the same.

“It’ll be hot in there,” he explains. “And loud. Can’t hear a thing,” he taps his ear, “so stick to text and sign language.”

“Ok.”

“Got your cellphone on vibrate? Good. Tuck it inside your jeans, like this.”

Steve follows directions.

Clint reviews him critically. “I’m too old to be really credible,” he mutters, “but you might just pass. Muss up your hair a bit, though.” 

Dressed now in jeans and plain t-shirts, the pair joins the crowd of mostly teen and college-aged kids milling about. The crowd is mostly female and more than a few girls take good, long looks at them.

They enter and the wall of sound hits them like an almost physical force. The music is techno, pounding, the vibrations assault them.

It’s dark and crowded, so much so that as Steve starts to push his way into the warehouse, he finds no clear path. Hands reach out for him and touch his body, stroking him in ways that raise his blood pressure and make him increasingly anxious. There is no personal space.

He looks over at Clint who is heading in the other direction and finds him dancing with a girl – really dancing, wrapped around her, his hands on her bare back sliding under her crop top.

Okaay then.

A girl stops in front of Steve, her hands reaching for his hips. She mouths something at him that he interprets to mean something like – dance with me?

So very much against his instincts, he lets her pull him into the crowd, trying to figure out how to move with the beat of the music. The crowd is like a living organism, undulating with the thrum of the music.

The girl he’s dancing with is groping him, rubbing her hands on his ass like he’s a genie and grinding her hips against him. He’d like to push her away, but instead he leans into her, burying his nose in her hair but looking around for his target.

He can’t find the girl even though he thinks she’ll stand out with her conservative clothes. Every girl here is wearing minimal clothing – crop tops, short shirts – it’s a little overwhelming.

Steve keeps moving, finding it easier than expected to extricate himself from the grip of one girl to dance a bit with another …

In the end, it’s not the girl who stands out – it’s her bodyguard who stands in the middle of a crowd like an island. He’s wearing a suit for crying out loud and not dancing – just standing looking intently at a couple intertwined on the dance floor.

Steve hopes that his own act is a little more credible. 

He follows the direction of the bodyguard’s focus and identifies the girl – wearing the requisite rave uniform of a very short skirt and barely there gauzy blouse – no sign of her scarf. To make matters more interesting, she’s wrapped around a grungy looking tattooed guy who is kissing her passionately. Steve would never have recognized her.

He looks up to the balcony and is unsurprised to catch a glimpse of Clint leaning over the bannister. Steve points towards the girl and Clint peers in her direction. He sees her and grins wickedly. Then he holds up three fingers and points to the bodyguard who is so visible.

Steve gets the message. Where are the other two guards?

He fights his way around the crowd and finds the other guard, who has apparently lost his shirt and tie, and is dancing (albeit rather stiffly) and generally blending in a bit better.

Steve texts Clint and gets a response almost right away. 

Found 3rd. Possible to take girl w/out goons seeing?

Steve has no lethal weapon with him. On one hand, he could take out the guards himself; on the other hand, he’s not sure how the crowd will react to violence.

He’s saved from the dilemma by his target extricating herself from the scruffy tattooed fellow and slipping out towards the bathroom. 

Steve follows. The guards are behind him.

He steps in front of the non-dancing guard and slams him up against the wall. Hard.

The guard grunts and goes down in a heap.

Steve weaves through the crowd and grabs the second, shirtless guard as he’s standing watching the door to the ladies’ room. He drags him into a nearby dim corridor and hits him. The guard fights back; Steve sees the flash of a knife and knocks it out of his hand. Bam. The second guard collapses to his hands and knees and Steve scoots away.

He uses the crowd to his advantage, weaving through the mob, sidestepping the kissing couples …

His target has just emerged from the ladies’ room and is looking around. Steve puts his arm around her in what he hopes others will see as a friendly move and pulls her towards a side door. 

She glares at him and starts to struggle.

He puts his mouth near her ear. “It’s ok,” he promises. “Just come with me. You’ll be ok.”

She struggles harder, but he’s also a big guy and perfectly willing to pick her up if necessary. He kicks open the side door which was actually locked and they burst through into an alley.

She takes a deep breath and starts to scream. He slams his hand over her mouth.

“Shut it,” he tells her fiercely. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She glares at him but can’t do anything. He grabs her elbow and leads her around a corner, walking very quickly towards a soccer field, pulling out his cellphone as they go.

‘Got her’, he texts. ‘what next?’

The girl kicks him in the shins and starts to run. He takes three steps and grabs her; she hits him again and he pins her arms. She screams and he lets go one hand in order to cover her mouth.

“Quit it,” he says irritably. He leads her on a zig zag path towards the car.

“Got your hands full?” Clint laughs as he jogs toward them.

Steve rolls his eyes.

He wraps his arms around her from behind and pins her. Clint takes off her fancy stilettos and frisks her, far more thoroughly than Steve would have, idly running his hands all the way up her leg and checking the wire in her bra.

She squirms furiously.

He even removes her necklace. “GPS?” he asks her idly. She tries to kick him.

He throws it as far as he can in the direction of the woods.

Steve is acutely aware of the impropriety of the situation. The girl (Clint calls her Fatina) is tiny, barely dressed, barefoot and now shaking in the cool night air; her diaphanous top reveals her bra – she might as well not be wearing anything. Steve handcuffs her hands behind her back and holds her while Clint conducts the interrogation. 

He’s good, if cruder than Steve would like. No threats of violence, or rather mere hints of violence, at the potential for violence. And lots of hints at sexual violence.

Given a chance, she swears fluently and crudely in English and Arabic.

Clint shrugs it off and sticks to English. He speaks softly, standing way too close for comfort, leaning in and whispering into her ear.

“I don’t have it,” she insists at first.

“We’re not the bad guys,” Clint says softly.

“You have the wrong person.”

“Just tell us where it is.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“We already know you have it.”

“My body guards will be coming to find me soon.”

“You don’t really want to get me angry, do you?” Clint asks, letting his fingers trail down her face.

She flinches, pulls away.

But it works. Even though she cries and spits at him (which Clint dodges), the girl does indeed have the information they’re after.

Clint watches her intently and asks tough questions.

Every time she says something useful, he asks Steve, “You got this?”

She finally gives in and agrees to lead them to where she’s hidden the memory stick. Steve drives; Clint sits in the back with Fatina.

“You’re a real shit,” she tells him nastily.

Clint shrugs.

“When this is all over, they’re going to come and get you and rip you apart,” she hisses furiously. “Are you even listening to me?”

Steve has been wondering the same thing. There’s a disconnect sometimes in their back and forth. Clint sometimes asks a question that’s she’s just answered and sometimes he doesn’t answer when she offers a hint of more information.

They tie her up in an empty room after retrieving the stick and promise to call someone to help her. And then they leave.

 

Hill debriefs them by video conference the next morning. Despite their success, she seems irritated. Clint seems distracted, almost sleepy.

The video conferencing has captions so each time anyone says anything, the words scroll across the bottom of the screen, like a CNN broadcast. Steve wishes he could turn it off.

“Barton,” Hill snaps. He ignores her.

“Nudge him for me, would you?” she nods to Steve who obligingly elbows his partner.

Clint looks up.

“If you’re going to be taking Rogers to raves, put him through the drug seminar at headquarters, will you?” she orders. 

Steve scowls. “Drugs don’t generally affect me, ma’am,” he reminds her.

“Most rave drugs are new – developed in the last few years,” she explains wearily. “You never know.”

“So not just theoretical?” Clint asks with a quirked eyebrow.

“I leave it to your best judgement,” she answers austerely. “But I don’t want to hear reports of Captain America running across the mall in his birthday suit, OK?”

Clint smirks.

“On the other hand,” Hill says, “if it does happen, make sure you have a camera handy.”

The video conference ends and Clint winces and pulls a little blue device out of his ear. He bangs it on the table. “I think it’s fried.”

“You’re deaf,” Steve realizes.

“Huh?”

Steve taps his own ear.

“Oh yeah,” Clint answers casually. “You just figured that out?”

“Yeah,” Steve nods, thinking back to a few recent moments where Clint has done something or said something a little out of step with the expected.

“Maybe I just need a new battery,” Clint grunts.

“Were you doing that interrogation without your hearing aid?” Steve asks.

Clint looks at him quizzically.

Steve tries to act out his question, but Clint puts up his hand. “Are you signing?” he asks. “Don’t.”

Steve hesitates.

“Look, don’t.” Clint says. “I’m the worst guy for this. If it had happened to someone else, I’d be the first one to say what the hell is he doing still working? Risking everyone else? He’s damaged, right? But it happened to me.”

“It happened on a mission?”

“Just don’t overcompensate,” Clint warns him. “I’m not stone cold deaf, mostly I just have issues in crowds. It’s hard to hear dialogue in some situations. That’s it.”

Steve nods. Something to keep in mind.


End file.
